There’s been no public news on the fate of Jason Dusterhoft‘s job at the Austin Police Department, or whether he’ll face criminal prosecution for what might’ve gone down between him and an ex-girlfriend (identified as Jane Doe) at the Yellow Rose in late August (“Bad Apple,” Oct. 12). However, the story has grown tangential legs. Over the past two weeks, Dusterhoft’s attorney Jason Nassour filed a lawsuit against Central Texas Gun Works owner and KLBJ-AM “Come and Talk It” host Michael Cargill and two of his recent guests, Kevin Fisk and Lyndon Lueders, seeking up to $200,000 for defamation and slander, saying that the three “knowingly published false statements or recklessly failed to investigate the truth.”
Fisk and Lueders are former public safety employees – Fisk with Waco Fire, Lueders with APD – and today moonlight as DIY investigators with a consortium of individuals known as External Affairs, which appears to know some things about some stuff, while also promoting right-wing crackpot theories online about George Soros and the American Deep State. Fisk and Lueders were the first two to break the news (on Cargill’s show) that Dusterhoft had engaged in less-than-upstanding behavior at the Yellow Rose, and that Dusterhoft was on restricted duty; during the course of their recounting, they said some salacious stuff that Dusterhoft claims to be defamatory: that Dusterhoft was celebrating his divorce that evening; that he invited “several Commanders and Lieutenants to his house to party with ‘strippers'”; that he sexually assaulted a stripper; and had non-consensual sex with a stripper, supposedly back at his home.
This is all unconfirmed stuff, and APD’s not talking about the case while it’s ongoing. What is known is that a search warrant was approved to search Dusterhoft’s phone after allegations surfaced that he physically assaulted Doe. Less established is whether there was a divorce party that night: Dusterhoft is recently divorced, but that became final last December, months before the party in question. The only source we spoke to who was at the club that night – Doe’s former roommate – was unable to identify anybody Dusterhoft was with besides herself and Doe; it was her first time meeting the exiled commander. And she doesn’t know whether there’s any substance to the claims that Dusterhoft sexually assaulted a dancer that night. (She said Doe danced in the Eighties and told people of that experience, but that neither went to Dusterhoft’s home that night, a fact corroborated by the search warrant.)
Cargill and Fisk cited the First Amendment and said they were acting merely as conduits of information they had received. (Fisk said Lueders has yet to be served with the lawsuit.) Cargill is represented by three law firms, but Fisk has yet to retain an attorney, and didn’t seem too concerned. They both thought it was notable that Dusterhoft took legal issue with the four outlined allegations, but not other equally salacious allegations discussed on Cargill’s show.
This article appears in October 19 • 2018.